The Mysterious, Messianic Fervor Generated By The King Of Rockers

August 04, 1985|By Sid Smith, Entertainment writer.

At the recent press conference revealing details of Chicago ticket sales for Bruce Springsteen`s concert, a reporter asked Jam Productions` Jerry Mickelson to explain to ``a general audience`` exactly what this Springsteen phenomenon was all about.

Everybody else present laughed, including Mickelson, who answered in part by saying, ``I don`t think I can explain it or that anyone else can, either.`` Pop star idols seem to glimmer on the firmament these days with the frequency and staying power of fireflies in a country meadow. What is different about the messianic fervor now generated by Springsteen is that it has been around, albeit in fewer followers, almost from the beginning.

Certainly it was present, for example, among the 200 youngsters who huddled in sweltering heat for hours outside a Greenwich Village nightspot to hear him play back in 1975. That was a gathering that had been played out many times before and was to be repeated, in different versions and growing numbers, endlessly in the future. Springsteen is Different, Special, Magic

--for years, anyone in the know has been aware of the preciousness of a single Springsteen concert ticket, what it meant and what it promised.

And if you somehow wandered in, without prior warning, you could hear it not just from the performance onstage, but in the eerie, quasi-religious, almost sexually craven chants from audience members themselves--those soft-throated moans of ``Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuce`` that repeatedly punctuate the silences between numbers. The phenomenon, the mystique and the electricity, hasn`t so much deepened or developed as spread.

The most obvious element of Boss mania stems from a single rare quality

--Springsteen, more than any other performer in rock and roll or pop music, is dynamite live. Most rockers build their following from their recordings;

fans have learned not to expect studio polish in person. It`s enough to be there, and hear their favorite tunes played out with what is more or less acceptable approximations.

Springsteen is different, not simply in his ability to produce clean live versions of recorded material. (His studio recordings are essentially taped performances, anyway.) Nor is it simply his renowned, inexhaustible endurance (he routinely plays for four hours.) Somehow, he makes every audience he ever meets feel they are at something special, an event, an evening of music just for them.

For Chicagoans, especially the longtime devotees, that elusive ability is the single most controversial aspect of his upcoming appearance. It`s one thing to inexplicably sculpt intimacy out of the 20,000-seat Rosemont Horizon, as Springsteen did more than a year ago. Can he do it for 70,000 at Soldier Field?

Most fans aren`t satisfied to hear that that`s what he did in Europe (and in fact at a few of his last concerts on this continent before going abroad). Europeans have only recently come to appreciate Springsteen the Superman in the way many Americans have for more than a decade--they aren`t likely to know, so goes the argument, what they`re missing.

The irony in it all here is that those newcomers eager to catch their first Springsteen concert at Soldier Field--to see what all the shouting is about--may not, for the most part, be able to see much at all, at least as far as a true fan is concerned.

Which has ignited a fury among local fans concerning the deeper issue. Even when he first took to larger arenas, he would regularly slip into a 500- seat house to stay in touch. And this was during a time when he said he would never play in a stadium venue. Does this new level of popularity mean that the Springsteen phenomenon, in the pure, true believer, now 15-year-old sense, is really over?

If it is, the warning signals have been everywhere. Springsteen`s uniqueness has always depended in part on that purity, that unwillingness to compromise even as he rose higher and higher. He followed ``The River,`` a well-rounded successful album, with ``Nebraska,`` a risky, heartfelt adventure album with all-acoustic guitar accompaniment and uniformly downbeat lyrics. Except for the initial hype explosion that led to his picture on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same two weeks in 1974, Springsteen seemed to go out of his way to avoid the hype machine.

But, then, with the release of ``Born in the U.S.A.,`` all that seemed to change. He talked to People Magazine and posed with Michael Jackson. He wore makeup for his first onscreen video (``Dancing in the Dark``) and, looking generally cleaned up and pumped up, became pretty, a far cry from the bearded, tousle-haired scruff of the `70s. Suddenly the poet, loner and sole prophet of rock and roll had turned into a sex symbol.

Not all of which is his fault. He is tired now, and by playing to 70,000- seat venues, he can still make a U.S. swing and keep the concerts to three dozen--no small number. And if the intimacy or personable quality is lacking

(it`s been gradually disappearing over the years anyway--a need for physical safety put a limit to his once cherished walks through the audience), there are other elements to the phenomenon that won`t die. His lyrics, some of which rival the finest poems written in the 20th Century, can be heard at Soldier Field; so, too, can his music, which advanced and expanded the sounds of rock and roll while simultaneously revitalizing it.

What has been true all along about him will still be true at Soldier Field on Friday--the more you learn about Bruce Springsteen, the more you wonder.